Version 2.5 is now available, featuring: System of Space and Time, an interactive art installation by Scott Snibbe; general bug fixes; and more custom-typeset e-books, including an exclusive comic by Chris Ware. Plus, the app is now free and comes with a one-month subscription to the Small Chair.

STRIDING BOLDLY INTO A TERRIFYING FUTURE OF ROBOTIC TEXTS

In our continuing efforts to extend a tentacle into every cranny of human experience, we proudly present the Small Chair, a weekly selection from all branches of the McSweeney’s family. One week you might receive a story from the upcoming Quarterly, the next week an interview from the Believer, the next a short film from a future Wholphin. Occasionally, it might be a song, an art portfolio, who knows. None of this material will be available online and it’s all pretty sure to be good stuff. (Note: Your subscription begins with the piece currently at the top of this page; past Small Chairs are not available, but the future is sure to be even better.)

The app also delivers the daily humor from our Internet Tendency, specially formatted for your iOS device, along with news, updates, and announcements. This feature will remain active and free, even if your Small Chair subscription expires.

Finally, we offer a small library of handpicked e-books, designed specifically for this platform, available as in-app purchases.

Allow the Small Chair to fill your moments of solitude, moments of togetherness, moments of intolerable boredom. The Small Chair is available on iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®, and currently nowhere else. It can be downloaded from the App Store℠, via the normal channels.

Your first month of weekly excitement is included. Subscriptions can be renewed every six months for $2.99 (or local equivalent).

WHAT ABOUT REAL BOOKS?

We are more committed than ever to books, paper, and exploring the possibilities and challenges of our printed objects. This year we launched a new line of children’s and young adult books, as well as a journal of food-writing called Lucky Peach. In the coming year, we’ll be publishing a medley of books from a number of our favorite authors, including David Byrne, Susan Straight, Hilton Als, John Brandon, Miranda July, and Alessandro Baricco. We’ll make as many of these available electronically as we can, but each is first and foremost a print project.

At the same time, we’re always looking for new ways to communicate with our readers. McSweeneys.net has been an important part of our operation from our very beginning, and this project is the next logical step. It’s fun to try things like this, and the iOS format provides opportunities for working with different types of media, especially in small chunks and with fast delivery. We expect it to evolve in interesting and unpredictable ways, and hopefully you’ll follow along with us.

An iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 4.0 or greater is required.
A network connection is needed the first time you run the app.

The application sends certain statistics about your device back to our servers. These only include things accessible via theiOS SDK such as device name,
UDID and iOS version. We need this information to manage your subscriptionsand make sure the content we deliver is optimized for your device.